So you took an entire day with your employees — maybe you even closed up shop — and hired professionals to train them in sales or customer service. Everyone left the conference room at the end of the day feeling positive and ready to tackle the next day with GUSTO!

All done, right?

Eh, no.

Yes, going through a training workshop in sales or customer service is commendable in itself. It means you’re taking a really important step for your company to improve your customer satisfaction across the board.

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But you can’t assume that one day of training is going to unleash an army of sales and service professionals that are the envy of your entire industry. (Sorry.)

Learning the basics of sales and customer service is the first step, but how much can you really absorb in one day and expect to be able to implement immediately? It takes a while for these concepts to be absorbed into your company’s philosophy and culture, and as those ideas marinate in your employees’ minds and work ethics…you bring in the mystery shoppers.

In talking with my friend Mike Miller with PRIMO Solutions, who provides these training services to his clients (and will soon be offering them to Measure CP’s clients as well), we decided that the best way to go about things is to teach these great just doing training and sending them off to an environment where they’re constantly on their toes because they know they might be interacting with a mystery shopping professional at any moment.

It will keep those concepts fresher in their heads, and it will also keep you apprised of how effective that training was what to communicate to your employees going forward. When you get those reports back from your mystery shopping company, you’ll know exactly which points stuck with your employees and which ones need to be hammered home again.